The most recent salvo in the kerfuffle between Minnesota congressmen Michele Bachmann and Keith Ellison finds Ellison attacking Bachmann for her statements made on Glenn Beck’s radio program on Thursday, where she said:

GLENN: Okay. So when you wrote this letter, then Keith Ellison comes out. And Keith Ellison is ‑‑ he has a record of being the Mafia hitman.

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: Well, he has a long record of being associated with CAIR and with the Muslim Brotherhood. CAIR is an unindicted co‑conspirator, as stated in the large terrorist financing case that we’ve had in the United States of America and so he came out and essentially wanted to shut down the inspectors general from even looking into any of the questions that we were asking. So he wanted to shut it down. In response I wrote another letter back to Keith Ellison, a 16‑page letter which I would encourage all of your listeners to go and read this letter. It’s what I call a bulletproof letter. I have 59 footnotes with one example after another of the penetration of the Muslim Brotherhood into the federal government…

I support American institutions. I don’t know enough about [the Muslim Brotherhood]. What I know about them is that in Egypt, one of their candidates has ascended to the presidency. I’ve never met that person. But I do think the United States should have a foreign policy where we talk to foreign leaders of all kinds. But no, I don’t have any, I don’t have any Muslim Brotherhood connections that she’s talking about.

According to Ellison’s impeccable logic, since he hasn’t met Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader and new Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, therefore he has no knowledge of the Muslim Brotherhood.

But a mountain of evidence of his contacts with and support of Muslim Brotherhood front groups – identified as such by the U.S. government – shows that the Muslim Brotherhood definitely knows who he is.

As Scott Johnson at Powerline noted at the time that Ellison had conflicting stories about who paid for the trip:

The Star Tribune first reported on Ellison’s hajj in two puff pieces by Mitch Anderson this past December. Anderson first reported the statement of Ellison spokesman Rick Jauert that Ellison had paid for the trip himself. When Anderson returned to the story, he got such deep stuff from Ellison as this: “This is just me trying to be the best person I can be.” In the second story Anderson also reported that the MAS Minnesota paid for Ellison’s trip to Mecca, though Anderson didn’t pause to note the discrepancy between his two stories on this point.

As Fox News reported on the MAS sponsorship of Ellison’s trip, Ellison returned the favor to his benefactors by speaking at the 2007 and 2008 MAS-Minnesota conventions.